"Throw Me a Rope" is the first single off the debut album "Unbreakable" from budding singing superstar Stephanie James!
You're going to want to hear it for yourself!
What can you expect from "Throw Me a Rope"? Here's the blurb from Stephanie herself!
Songwriters Leaf Weigel and Stephanie James are not only co-writers, but friends, past roommates, colleagues, and deep feelers. “Throw Me a Rope” was born in a painful, yet beautiful moment of synchronicity between the two. They both describe the song as representing a turning point in their personal lives.
Weigel and James, both graduates of Berklee College of Music, moved to different parts of Southern California around the same time. They kept in touch as their lives unfolded, bringing steep learning curves, hardships, and challenges. The first lyric of the song “treading water since I got here” pays homage to the difficulties they faced during that transition.
Weigel describes the feeling “like being in the middle of the ocean with no reprieve. Like you're just out there, exhausted, and you don’t know if anybody can see you struggling.” They don’t recall laboring over the lyrics but say “they just came out like they were already there. I just had to get out of the way and say the truth about how I was feeling.”
There is a raw bluntness to the lyrics. The feeling of distress is not sugar coated, but there is still an element of hope. James sings, “in this ocean, I’m still hoping things ain’t always gonna be this way.” The groove and production of the song carries this same element of hope. There is a forward movement that keeps the listener waiting for the reprieve.
James describes the pre-chorus: “Like your higher self can see the shore, and knows the hard times will pass, but you are not quite there. The universe has more lessons.”
Weigel and James describe the chorus as the ultimate plea. Weigel says, “The line ‘take me upstairs’ and ‘put me to bed’ was inspired by the times I fell asleep in the car after a long road trip with my family. I would be fast asleep when we arrived home, but my dad would carry me up the stairs and put me to bed. I felt so cared for in that moment. I was craving that level of TLC when I wrote these lyrics.”
The second verse speaks to resilience. James and Weigel bond over the lyrics in the second verse that say “feeling all this like I wanted.” They laugh about thriving on life’s intensity, and wanting to experience everything, knowing that includes pain.
Weigel and James lean into life by being honest about their emotions and claiming them. “Throw Me A Rope” has a clear ‘turn’ in it. The lyrics shift from raw despair to what Weigel calls “picking yourself up by the bootstraps.” James sings of a hope that comes only from within “nothing's gonna change until I do.”
James reflects, “This song was a way for us to process our emotions together. We were going through the same things and we needed a song to pull us out. It is so meaningful to both of us. It has been therapeutic and made us closer friends.”
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If you want to learn more about Stephanie, check out her Section 36 Music profile page. There you can find links to her full interview with Section 36 Music, her social media accounts, as well as more samples of her incredible singing.
You can also hop directly to her interview right here on Section 36 Music. That will give you an opportunity to learn more about this amazing singer.
Be sure to give “Throw Me a Rope" a listen!
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